This invention relates to a method and system for protecting the passengers and the conveyance in a collision or crash, and more particularly it relates to an external air bags system which may be deployed automatically or manually for saving the lives of the passengers in an accident.
Safety air bags are provided in automobiles, which would deploy within the cabin of the automobile in an accident for preventing injury to the passengers. Commonly, the safety air bags are installed at the steering wheel and/or the dash board, and they would be activated automatically in the accident to provide an impact cushion for the passengers in the front seats in the automobile. There are serious problems associated with the use of such safety air bags. The most severe problem is the tremendous force upon their deployment that they exert on the body and particularly the head of the passengers. Such force per se may cause fatal injury to the passengers, especially for passengers having a small stature or for children. Furthermore, such frontal air bags provide no protection to the passengers in the event of a side collision.
Furthermore, the body front structure of modern automobiles is designed to collapse under the impact force in a head on accident so as to allow some distance of deceleration for reducing the impact to the passengers. However, such measure for softening the impact has only a meager effect in many cases where heavy metal objects like the engine of the automobile is pushed backwards towards the occupants, the result is often deadly. Even when there is no injury to the occupants, the cost for repairing the damage to the automobile is very high and it is ever increasing. Also, additional costs are incurred when police and the ambulance are required to attend to the accident, and when hospitalization is required for the injured. For the above reasons, the automobile insurance cost is extremely high.
It is impractical to provide individual safety bags for all the passengers in a multipassengers conveyance, such as a train or bus, since the cost of installing an air bag for every seat in such vehicle is prohibitive and impractical.
In the crash of a public aircraft, there is always a considerable amount of injury or fatality suffered by a large number of passengers. The injury and fatality are caused by the enormous force the aircraft striking the ground or water, which completely destroys its structure. Similarly, boats, hovercraft and submarines may also involved in a crash with for example other boats, submarines, or with the dock or obstacles under the water.
Attempts have been made to provide external air bags on aircrafts to lessen the impact force with the ground in an accident. U.S. Pat. No. 5,259,574 to L. Carrot and U.S. Pat. No. 5,992,794 to I. Rotman et al show the provision of such external inflatable air bags at the underside of a helicopter. Also, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,778 to A. Otsuka, a plurality of external inflatable air bags are provided at the underside of an airplane for the same purposes. However, the air bags therein do not provide any deceleration of the descending speed of the aircraft. They merely provide cushioning of the impact at the end of the fall of the aircraft when it strikes the ground. Moreover, there is no protection provided to the front end of the aircraft, which usually sustains the heaviest damage in a frontal crash.
Also, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,646,613 and 5,959,552 both to Cho, U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,076 to Mercier et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,725,265 to Baber, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,708,194 to Amit, external inflatable air bags are provided for an automobile to cushion the impact force in an accident. However, none the air bags shown in these patents provides a deceleration means to reduce the speed of the vehicle or any means which can capture an approaching vehicle in a head on crash situation. Also, none of these patents shows a safe and effective method of detecting the speed of an approaching object. The laser, maser, or radar system for such detection shown in these patents could cause injury to the eyes of a person when such detecting light beam is reflected from a polished surface such as the bumper of a vehicle.
For boats, hovercrafts, submarines and other water crafts normally a reverse thrust is used by reversing the rotation of the propellers to brake their forward movement. However, the braking action is slow due to the inertia of the craft in the forward direction. In order to avoid collision in an accident, an effective means must be provided to terminate their forward movement promptly and instantly.